Beer, he realized, grimacing. Lots of it. He didn’t remember ordering, or drinking, a third (a fourth?). But he must’ve. He could taste it.

He stumbled down the hall, propping an arm against the wall to steady himself as he kicked off his boots.

Another step, and he stubbed his toe on a free weight that Willis had left in the middle of the floor. He swore and hopped around on one foot.

There was a sound, a shuffling of movement, and then Zora’s voice calling, “Ash? That you?”

Ash lowered his injured foot back to the floor, cringing. He smelled coffee. Which meant she’d been waiting up for him. It must be later than he’d thought.

He hobbled the rest of the way down the hall, into the kitchen.

Zora leaned against the kitchen table, her ordinarily calm expression twisted into something troubled. Chandra sat beside her, spinning something that looked like a small, grease-covered gear with an inordinate amount of determination, and Willis was making tea, which seemed like overkill. Ash could already smell the coffee.

“You’re all up late,” he muttered.

Chandra wrinkled her nose and balanced the gear between two fingers. “You’re drunk?” She said drunk like someone else might say stupid.

Ash frowned. Was he drunk? He didn’t think he’d ever been drunk before, but it felt right. He was going to die this week. Getting good and drunk seemed like the sort of thing he should do during his final week of life.

“We were just talking about the broadcast,” Zora said.

Ash sat, propping his foot on one knee so he could study his throbbing toe through his threadbare sock. “You saw?”

The teakettle began to whistle. Willis moved it off the burner. “The whole city saw, Captain,” he said, pulling a chipped mug down from the cupboard above the stove. “It’s all anyone’s talking about.”

“The Black Cirkus can travel back in time,” Zora murmured, scrubbing a hand over her face. “I guess we already knew that, but now . . .”

She trailed off, but Ash knew what she meant. It felt different to hear Quinn announce it to the entire city. A part of him had still been hoping what they saw at Fort Hunter had been a fluke.

Chandra looked up at Ash, pursing her lips. “Wait, where were you all night? You said you were going to meet us at Dante’s.”

Ash blinked, slowly, through his drunkenness. Every pair of eyes seemed to be on him, waiting for an explanation.

Hesitating, he said, “I . . . took a walk.” And then he shrugged, like this might lessen the blow. “I sort of ended up in a bar near the Fairmont. . . .”

“You went over to the Fairmont?” Chandra flicked the gear she’d been playing with to the floor. “Why?”

Zora said, “He was probably looking for Quinn.”

Chandra made a vague noise in the back of her throat. Willis’s mustache twitched as he poured himself a cup of tea. Neither looked surprised by what Zora had just said.